1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to write-once recording media, and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for recording management information on a write-once recording medium and the recording medium.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
An optical disc has been widely used as an optical recording medium to record large amounts of data. Recently, a blu-ray disc (BD) has been introduced as a high density digital video disc (HD-DVD) for recording high definition video data and superior sound quality audio data.
The BD has been spotlighted as a next generation of HD-DVD and as a next generation optical recording solution for storing more data than a conventional DVD.
Accordingly, various specifications of the BD have been standardized including a rewritable blu-ray disc (BD-RE) and a write once blu-ray disc (BD-WO).
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a structure of a recording area in a rewritable blu-ray disc (BD-RE) in accordance with the prior art. Particularly, FIG. 1 shows a recording area structure of a disc having a single layer.
The rewritable blu-ray disc (BD-RE) is divided into a lead-in area, a data area and a lead-out area from an inner circumference of the blu-ray disc. The data area is further divided to an inner spare area (ISA), a user data area and an outer spare area (OSA). The ISA is arranged at an inner circumference of the data area and the OSA is arranged at an outer circumference of the data area for replacing defective areas in the data area. User data is recorded in the user data area.
During the recording of data on the BD-RE having the above mentioned structure, a surface of the BD-RE may be damaged or polluted by various factors. As a result, defect areas are generated. If the defect area is generated during recording data, data recorded in the defect area is transferred to spare areas such as the ISA and the OSA.
When transferring data to the spare areas, management information of the defect area is recorded in a defect management area (DMA) of the lead-in area or the lead-out area. The defect management area is shown in FIG. 1 as DMA1 to DMA4. The management information of a defect area includes location information of the defect area and the spare area where the data of the defect area is recorded.
A minimum recording unit of the BD is a cluster. A single cluster includes 32 sectors and a single sector includes 2048 bytes.
Since data can be rewritable at the any location in the BD-RE, data may be recorded at random locations without consideration of a recording method. The management information also can be rewritable in the DMA. Accordingly, the defect area can be sufficiently managed with a small DMA by using a method of updating the management information in the DMA. That is, 32 clusters generally are allocated to each DMA of the BD-RE.
In case of a write once disc, data may only be recorded one time in recording areas of the write once disc. Accordingly, recording data is limited by the recording method. Therefore, defect management has become a major factor in a high density write once disc such as the write once blu-ray disc (BD-WO).
The defect management area is required in the write once disc for recording defect management information and disc use state information. A defect management method of the write once disc becomes more complicated compared to the rewritable disc because of the write once characteristic. However, a unified standard supporting the above mentioned requirements of the write once disc is not completely standardized and thus an effective management method has been in great demand.